By summerbreeze ~ A aaahh, Christmas is coming, and along with Christmas come those horribly annoying Christmas newsletters. I don't know how you feel about them, or even if you annually put them out, but for myself, I cannot help but cringe over the ones that come our way every year. Never in the History of mankind has there been more bragging, exaggerating, gloating, half truths, and denial of real facts than in that "friendly" print-out inclosed in an innocent looking Christmas Card. Just once I would like to hear some honest news ( warts and all ) instead of folks going on and on ad nauseam about their cake lives. ......and the worst of the worst are from fundamentalist friends and relatives. How much more enjoyable and heartwarming the Christmas Season would be, if something more like the following was lurking in the mailbox for me. ( A bit of a stretch, but lets have fun with it ) Hi All. The Smith clan here wishes you a very Merry Christma...

By freeatlast ~ D ear Arnold, Although we never met, when I was a girl in the 70’s, I despised you with righteous indignation and consigned you to hell in my mind. To be fair, since only those people who attended my little red brick church in my Virginia town were going to heaven, I damned plenty of others as well. The Catholics worshiped the Pope, AKA, the anti-Christ; the Jews had murdered Jesus; the Methodists were lukewarm and God would surely spew them from his mouth; the Baptists were close, but since they did not baptize for “the remission of sins,” they were lost too; the Pentecostals failed to worship “decently and in order” with all that tongue-speaking and flailing around; the JW’s and Mormons were so far gone, they were beneath pondering. But you, Arnold, you were the worst of all. You were an atheist, and a grouchy one at that. Knowing you only from your letters to the editor in the local newspaper, I read your complaints with disdain, complaints that were reg...

By Klym ~ For my fellow Ex-C'ers who are following the case of the anonymous whiteboard posters (see my previous article " Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays "), here is the essay I posted on the teacher's lunchroom whiteboard in response to Christian complaints of feeling marginalized because of the cancellation of the traditional Christmas sing-along at our school: H appy Holidays and/or Merry Christmas? Happy Holidays is an all-inclusive well wish that is perfectly appropriate for this season of the year. It excludes no one regardless of race, creed, or culture. It wishes all human beings joy and kindness during the holiday season . It's kind of like an all-purpose greeting---it covers all the bases and should insult no one. Merry Christmas is also a proper greeting, but by no means is it the only appropriate greeting for this time of winter solstice and the celebration of new light and life. Merry Christmas does, however, narrow down the greeting t...

By Valerie Tarico ~ T he birth story of baby Jesus celebrates the promise of new life, but for girls it also sends a harmful message. How can we acknowledge this without spoiling the rest? Most Americans, even many who are not very religious, look forward to Christmas as a time to celebrate warmth, friendship, generosity and good cheer. Familiar festivities weave together stories and traditions from many cultures , which makes it easy to find something for everyone. But maybe it’s time to look a little closer at the Christmas story itself. The birth story of the baby Jesus is heartwarming and iconic—the promise of new life and new hope in a time of darkness. It has inspired centuries of maternal art and is the best loved of all Bible stories. It also has a darker subtext, especially for someone like me—the mother of two daughters. In the story, an angel appears to a virgin girl, announcing that she will conceive a baby boy. Her fiancé Joseph decides to stick with her only becau...

By Valerie Tarico ~ C elestial messengers, natural wonders and a virgin birth establish the baby Jesus as someone special. Why does the rest of the New Testament ignore these auspicious beginnings? Sometime toward the end of the first century, the writer of Luke told a story that would become one of the most treasured in all of Western Civilization, the birth of the baby Jesus. It opens with an announcement known as the Annunciation. A messenger angel named Gabriel appears to a young Jewish virgin, Mary, telling her that the spirit of God will enter her and she will give birth to a child who is both human and divine: The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom ther...

By Klym ~ I was sitting in the teacher's lunchroom at the elementary school where Iwork and I was pissed off. I honestly thought I could feel smoke coming out of my ears, if that were possible. I was all alone (it was a Friday, so most teachers go off campus for lunch to celebrate the end of the work week) and I had all sorts of irreverent thoughts simmering in my brain, about to boil over. On the whiteboard in the lounge someone had anonymously written, in very large letters, with the word "Christmas" circled with red marker, the following statement: Merry Christmas! (notice, I said CHRISTMAS, not holidays!!) A little background information is in order. For the past almost 40 years (the school was founded in 1976) this small north central Texas campus has been led by three principals---all bible-believing christians. They all three let christians do and say whatever they wanted through the years. The bible was read, prayers were spoken over the in...

By Ben Love ~ "G ood" is a concept that exists only in the perceptions of the humans that are here to ask the question. In other words, what would be "good" if there were no humans here to define the term? What would be "good" if there were no humans alive to ask the question? What would be "good" if there were no humans alive to recognize it when they saw it? What would be "good" if humans weren't here to identify what is "bad?" Indian family in Brazil posed in front of hut - 3 bare-breasted females, baby and man with bow and arrows. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The concept of "good" is, like everything else in the theoretical world (as opposed to the material world, which would exist without us), a product of the human imagination. Something is deemed "good" not because there is an unseen deity somewhere saying so, but because we, as the products of natural evolution and our own social evolution...

By Carl S ~ A nyone who watches the I.D. Channel, with its true crime cases, or CSI , finds out how crimes are solved. It's different when it's real rather than observed in the comfort of home on a TV screen. I just came home after serving on a jury for three weeks. The case involved a man on trial for rape and murder. On the last day, after concluding arguments of prosecution and defense, we were instructed to go to the jury room to reach a verdict. Since I was the first person to speak in the room, I pointed out the testimonies of friends and relatives as to the defendant's outstanding credentials in the community, and their protestations of disbelief he was capable of the crime. Then there were the testimonials of eyewitnesses, who, under cross-examination , contradicted one another. On the other hand, I said, consider the evidence: The victim's blood was found on the defendant's clothing and in his house, his skin cells were found under her fingernail...

By Ben Love ~ 1. “I don’t understand what this means, but God does.” Well, it’s great that God understands it, but what good is that supposed to do for you? To me, this is the same as saying: “I believe in Bigfoot , and I use the word ‘believe’ because I’m not fully certain he really does exist. This is where my faith comes in. And if there are things about Bigfoot that I don’t understand, I won’t worry about it, because at least Bigfoot understands them.” How incoherent can we be here? I mean, seriously. Here you have this entity that you’re not even sure exists, and when you encounter attributes about this entity that could or should make you question your belief in the first place, your answer is to shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, he knows the truth about this. I don’t, but I’ll go on believing.” The only thing that can be said about your “belief” at this point is that you maintain it merely because you want to, because, clearly, there is no possible evidence in exi...

From Luke ~ H ello everyone! I stumbled upon this website about a month ago as I was gathering information for a research paper. I was in the middle of Google-searching "The problem of Islam" when I discovered another suggested link titled "The problem of Christianity." Out of sheer curiosity, I clicked the link and was directed to this blog. Since my discovery of this site, I've read quite a handful of accounts from ex-evangelicals, and I have to say, my heart ached in sympathy as I read a lot of your extimonies. (Yeah, I know the lingo already :) Ironically, I'm currently a freshman at a Bible College in California , but am more objective of my faith now than I ever have been, no longer allowing fear of man or divine judgement determine what I believe, but logic and reasoning. Since I've become "saved"/"born again", I've actually experienced a lot of positive outcomes in my life. I was kind of a dead beat pot head...

By Tania ~ N ovember 15, 2015 -- that's the earliest date on which I will attend a regular church service again. I cannot do this anymore. I can't. I don't normally open a hymnal, read the title of the hymn that we -- the congregation -- are about to sing, and slam it shut...but that's what I did a few weeks ago. The inside of my head was screaming, for the hundredth time, I don't agree! I can't sing this! This is NOT me anymore! My brother and his wife were sitting beside me, and they sang, and the other people sang. I just bit my lip to keep from screaming or crying -- or both -- and tried to distract my mind with other things. I just can't do this anymore. And we stood for prayer, because that's what we -- they -- do. They pray for those in the church, in the city, across the world. And I stood, closed my eyes, bowed my head...and would have rather been out there, visiting someone in a nursing home , giving $5 to a homeless person who might no...